More MLS

If you could make it through the marathon of men in suit and ties calling timeouts, the trading of GAM and TAM, the flipping of picks, you might have noticed that five Canadians were selected in the first two rounds of the 2019 MLS Superdraft.

As CanPL moves toward its 2019 launch as this country’s division one, despite the presence of three Canadian sides in MLS, it will be interesting to see what the league takes away from MLS — and what it stays away from.

Now, there are a lot of factors to why the 2016 game did better than 2017; cord-cutters, the move to an afternoon game and the fact that 2016’s game was one of most boring things ever, maybe that scared a fraction of the audience away for 2017 (“fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you”). The fact that Toronto FC put up one of the most incredible seasons in MLS history didn't help increase the reach of the big game.

The truth is, 2018 will be a low point for men’s soccer in Canada. Boy, is it going to suck. It will be ultimate in lame-duck years. Canadian jobs will dwindle. We’ll have fewer teams to support. And even in TFC beats Seattle 10-0 on Saturday, that’s not going to change a thing.

But, where MLS has truly stumbled in Canada is in making itself a national concern. Basically, in this country, interest in the league is restricted to the three metro areas that have teams. The three Canadian MLS clubs have virtually no presence in the rest of Canada.

What Miami FC, along with the lower-division Kingston Stockade FC (a team based in New York state), did is initiate an international legal proceeding targeting FIFA, CONCACAF and the United States Soccer Federation. What do the two clubs want? They have gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, claiming that FIFA is violating Swiss law (the body’s headquarters are in Switzerland) by not compelling the USSF to have a system of promotion and relegation between its professional divisions. MLS is Div-1, while USL and NASL are Div-2.

A Canadian Soccer Novel

About The 11

The 11 offers insight, interviews and commentary by respected soccer journalists. It is affiliated with the Canadian soccer magazine, Plastic Pitch. Our editor, Steven Sandor, has covered Major League Soccer, United Soccer Leagues, World Cup qualifying, CONCACAF Champions League, women’s soccer and the Canadian Soccer League and has won numerous awards for his magazine work. His work has appeared in the Sun chain of newspapers, Soccer 360, World Soccer, Soccer Canada, Philadelphia Daily News and the Deseret News. His work has appeared in publications in Canada, the United States, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Namibia.